Corporate pension funds continue to become flusher thanks to the surging stock market.

The funded status of the typical U.S. corporate pension plan in April rose 0.7 percentage points to 89.2 percent, the eighth consecutive month of improvement, according to monthly statistics published by BNY Mellon Asset Management.

The funding ratio for the typical corporate plan has improved 4.9 percentage points since the beginning of the year.

We'll get a good reading on Friday when the government releases its April jobs report. Then less reliable ADP report released Wednesday, however, showed that private employers added 179,000 jobs in April, which was below consensus expectations.

One potential forward-looking reading does suggest that the unemployment rate will continue to drop.

According to Carol Bowie, head of compensation policy development at ISS Governance, the most significant factor in that increase was cash pay. ISS did an early analysis of 600 Russell 3000 companies' CEO pay disclosures where the same CEO was in place in 2009 and 2010. And it found that 81 percent of CEOs received cash incentive pay--short-and long-term payouts--in 2010. That's compared to 70 percent in 2009.

According to a new analysis of proxies conducted by Towers Watson, median total cash compensation increased 17 percent for CEOs last year. This compares with a 3 percent median increase the prior year. To compute cash compensation, the consulting firm includes base salary, as well as annual and discretionary bonus payments.

CEOs continued to grow more upbeat about the overall economy and their own company's prospects.

According to the results of Business Roundtable's first quarter 2011 CEO Economic Outlook Survey member CEOs estimate real GDP will grow by 2.9 percent in 2011, an increase from the 2.5 percent expected in the fourth quarter of 2010.